The present invention relates to an oven for cooking a food product in a residential oven, and more particularly to a residential oven which effects quick cooking of said food product.
McKee U.S. Pat. No. 5,254,823, U.S. Pat. No. 5,434,390, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,558,793, commonly owned by TurboChef, the assignee of the present invention and hereinafter referred to collectively as the "TurboChef Patents," are directed to quick-cooking ovens. The ovens described therein are primarily commercial ovens, partially because of the necessary size thereof, and partially because they lack features necessary in a residential consumer-operated oven (as opposed to an oven operated by a commercial employee). The TurboChef Patents are incorporated herein by reference.
As will be set forth below, for a wide variety of reasons adaptation of a commercial embodiment to a residential embodiment introduces many new problems which must be solved. For example, whereas a commercial establishment (such as a restaurant or a fast-food store) utilizes portion-control techniques to ensure that each portion of a particular food product is of generally the same size, weight, consistency, configuration and dimensions, in a residential setting, the oven will be subjected to large variations in the size, weight, consistency, configuration and dimensions of the food product. A successful oven must be capable of adapting to these varying factors. For example, a hamburger to be cooked in a commercial oven would typically be of the same size, weight and shape as the hamburger before and the hamburger to follow. On the other hand, in a residential oven the size, weight and shape of successive hamburgers may vary substantially such as a small, circular, thin hamburger of 0.3 pounds to a large, square, thick hamburger of 0.7 pounds. Therefore, "custom finishing" of the food product may be required.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an oven for quick cooking of a food product wherein the oven is suitable for residential use.
Another object is to provide such an oven which, in one embodiment, includes user-operable custom finishing means.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide such an oven which, in one embodiment, is sufficiently compact for residential use.
It is another object to provide such an oven which is easy and inexpensive to manufacture, use and maintain.